Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama was searching for a trade route to India, but he didn't bring valuable gifts to trade for the spices. The locals were not amused.
Anthony Quinn punches a sailor in a scene from the 1965 film A High Wind In Jamaica. Sailors have a reputation for swearing but is this justified? 20th Century-Fox/Getty Images
There s good reason to believe that sailors have always slung salty language on the high seas. At least that was the impression of the Puritan preacher Cotton Mather, who wrote in a 1699 sermon, It has been an Observation, older than the Dayes of
Plato, That the
Sea is a School of Vice. Is not the Sin of profane Swearing and Cursing, become too notorious among our Sailors? Even the adjective salty, meaning crude language, originated in the late 1800s as a reference to the colorful culture and vocabulary of sailors.